Wed, 21 Feb 2018 21:11:54 -0800WeeblyTue, 23 Jan 2018 21:40:35 GMThttp://www.unitedprayertower.org/blog1/a-prayer-for-cfoMartha Dobra shared this prayer sent to CFOers in 2012 by Jane Kampsnider. It is always good to pray this way.

Lord, I invite Your Holy Spirit to refresh CFO in this hour. Bring new life to us. Show us Your will andYour way. You are the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through You. Be real to us.

Give us grace for one another. Give us fruitfulness in our meetings. Help us not to do the same old thing out of habit and tradition. Give us fresh, new creativity and vibrant faith. Give us wisdom, knowledge, understanding, revelation, eyes to see and ears to hear. Help us be in the river of Your love. We want to experience Your Kingdom like never before.

Your Kingdom is at hand. We choose to walk in it to the fullest extent we can. Send Your ministering angels to go before us and prepare the way. Send warring angels. God, help us rest in You and not strive to get to the next level. Help us have Your heart for one another and for CFO.

Give us boldness and wisdom as we pursue You and Your Kingdom. Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. We are victorious over-comers, bought with the blood of the Lamb. We are Your servants and Your ambassadors, Your workmanship, made in Your image to give You glory. Give us minds prepared for action. Help us set our hope fully on You.

Reveal Your glory in our midst. Help us break out of the old and into the new. May You be honored and glorified. Help us honor one another. Stop any pettiness or bickering or quarreling among us. We choose to be yoked together with You in prayer and have hearts of humility and thanksgiving.Amen and Amen.

Thoughts Lord put on my heart todayJoshua received wonderful promises from the Lord in first ten verses of this 5th book

Lord said: (promises for you & me too!)1. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.2. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life.3. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you.4. Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them.

God will surely give each of us a portion of His world to be praying for...ask Him what portion and follow through in prayer for as long as God gives you that assignment...

5. Be strong and very courageous.6. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. 7. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged8. For I, The Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go!

(God said for Joshua to be careful to obey all the law Moses gave him...do not turn to the right or to the left, so he will be successful wherever he would go...do not let the Book of the Law depart from his mouth...meditate on it day and night)

Today I am certain God would say to us to be careful to obey The Sermon on the Mount...Matthew Chapters 5,6,& 7...meditate on it day and night and write it on our heart. My grace & mercy are with you says the Lord

Wake Up CFOers. Christians tend to fall asleep and stop being watchmen on the wall when things are going well. It happened to the Pilgrims. When the hardships of those first few years were over and they had entered a period of prosperity they got lax about prayer and worship. Their relationships with the Indians suddenly turned into violence as the Indians rose up, attacked, killed and burned. Only by confessing their sins, praying and seeking God’s intervention were they able to prevail and survive.

It happened again when King George tried to milk the colonies of all their wealth. When the colonies declared their independence, they couldn’t win a war. They lacked the man power, training, and weapons. Only by turning to God in prayer and worship and beseeching His intervention did they succeed. ​This is the pattern of our history: a great crisis followed by a great awakening unto God, followed by a lethargy and turning away from God. Today we are again in a desperate crisis needing God’s intervention. The rights and voice of Christians is being systematically silenced. In this last election one candidate said that deeply held beliefs (even though Biblically based) must be changed in the face of political reality.

Worldwide Christians are persecuted and hundreds are slaughtered each day. In America Churches are bombed. Christians are murdered. Babies are being sacrificed on the altars of Moloch and Baal. God’s rainbow, the mark of His covenant, has been stolen by groups advocating sexual deviancy. The good news is that America is not doomed. Her greatest days are just ahead. God has said so. America was born with a divine destiny, appointed to be a city on a hill, shining the light of Christ upon all nations of the world, proclaiming salvation. That destiny is still ahead of her. Not only is God speaking that message through His prophets today, he spoke it to Glenn Clark through the lips of Dr. George Washington Carver.Dr. Carver had just given a talk at Macalester College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dr. Clark was taking him to the station for his return to Tuskegee. As they road Dr. Carver said, “Last night as I rode to the auditorium I was holding a little white flower in my hand all the way, and in the silence while we rode, I was talking to it and it was talking to me. It told me some wonderful things. And the flowers have never failed to tell me the truth. It told me that there is going to be a great spiritual awakening in the world, and it is going to come from people up here, from people connected with you and me, from plain, simple people who know – not merely believe – but actually know that God answers prayer.

“It is going to be a great revival of Christianity, not a revival of religion. We can have religion and still have wars. But this is to be a of true Christianity. It is going to rise from the laymen, from men who are going about their work and putting God into what they do, from men who believe in prayer, and who want to make God real to mankind.”

Dr. Clark added, “And because I know that George Washington Carver knows how to talk with the flowers, and, because I know that flowers know how to talk with him, I know that this prophecy is going to come true.”

The ball is in the court of the people of CFO. We must pray harder than we have ever prayed before. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the 1750s, is credited with saying that “It seems God cannot act until a man asks Him.” God needs us and our prayers to bring in an Awakening unto God. It starts with CFO kinds of people.

Pray if possible out of loyalty to God...For the joy of it, not results...Do not pray to bring things to pass...pray to see things that are already in the Kingdom.Do not limit the avenues by which God will answer your prayers...Remember that God's ways of manifesting God's love are as uncountable as the stars of the firmament...Do not feel responsible for your prayers or the answer to them...God alone is the Planner and knows best...Love, rejoice, and be thankful...For the unfoldment of God's plan...To you as you see it.

Simply Good News by N.T. Wright is a book I recommend to anyone who wants to understand the Gospel, the Good News. The last chapter ("Praying the Good News") gets my recommendation for all intercessors. Here I have collected a few of my favorite quotations from that chapter.​​ * * * posted by Gary Fick

Our calling is ... to become good news people. ... We can only do it through prayer.

The great truths he [Jesus] was teaching were precisely about the creator God coming to renew and restore creation! [That is what we pray for!]

[We are inclined] to the mistake of reducing God's kingdom to God doing what we want him to do.

The good news is that the living God is indeed establishing his kingdom on earth as in heaven, through the finished work of Jesus, and is inviting people of all sorts to share not only in the benefits of this kingdom but also in the work through which it will come to its ultimate completion.

The good news is primarily that God---the generous God, the loving God---is being honored, will be honored, has been utterly and supremely honored, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

​[We hallow God's name because]God is the father, the stunningly generous creator, the supremely wise ruler and guide of the nations. He is the father of Jesus. He is the God who makes promises and keeps them. He is the lord of the angels. He is utterly faithful, utterly loving, utterly determined to bring heaven and earth together in a glorious and fruitful marriage. ... He is the sovereign one, ... the source of all delight, all daylight, all that is lovely, lively, and liberating. This is the ultimate good news. This God has come to be with us, to celebrate his name and his nature, to make all things new.

The starting point for all fully Christian prayer is worship. ... Worship ... means "celebrating the worth" - [it] is learning to be a Christian.

...prayer means standing between the one true God and his world, becoming a place where the love of this God and the life of this world (and especially the pain of this world) are somehow held together.

God wants to run his world, to bring his love and wisdom and purposes to bear on the world, through human beings.

All prayer stands with arms outstretched, one to embrace the loving God, the other to embrace the needy world.

Prayer is part of the larger vocation in which we humans are supposed to be bringing God's love to bear on his world.

Only with prayer at the center will the work of the kingdom go forward.

"In this manner, therefore, pray... " (Matthew 6:9) One of the best ways to describe Christianity has always been to say it is not a religion but a relationship. And nowhere is that more evident than in the way Jesus taught His disciples to pray. The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 needs to be read in its context to understand what Jesus was saying to His disciples and to all of us then and now. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus draws attention to the formal religion of the Jews which had ceased to be a close and personal relationship with God. The way they prayed was an excellent example of their lost of intimacy with God. Just before teaching His disciples how to pray, Jesus called their religious leaders hypocrites for praying lengthy prayers in public to impress others. In contrast, Jesus told the disciples to pray to their Father in private using the words of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father in heaven" - a prayer that offers the simple language of an intimate relationship. What was good for disciples then is good for disciples today. You can pray in the words of the Lord's Prayer or simply follow its clear and simple themes. Jesus' model prayer is a way to keep your relationship with God on a Father-to-child basis. When you pray, say, "Our Father...." remembering that scripture tells us we ought to always be in prayer (I Thess. 5:17), open communication with the Father talking to Him and then listening above all! Simply share your life and living with Him. Include Him in your conversations. "What do You think, Pappa?"

​--Gary Fick]]>Wed, 02 Nov 2016 21:32:36 GMThttp://www.unitedprayertower.org/blog1/acr-report-from-gary-fickFrom October 28 to 31, 2016, the Advisory Council Ring ofCFO North America met at Watson Homestead near Painted Post, NY for their annual fall meeting. Four members of the UPT Council Ring were present. Many items of significance were shared in an atmosphere of the presence of The Holy Spirit, but the following seem especially important for the encouragement of UPT and its followers.

(1) Rex Schrolucke spoke prophetically reminding us that wine comes from the cluster and not from a single grape. Our united intercession is one way God is at work.

(2) David Dobra sang a prophetic song in tongues, and the interpretation by Gary Fick was that "In the midst of these human voices, listen for My voice. Discerning My voice [God's voice] will lead you beyond human possibilities."

(3) David Piatt spoke from a quotation that had impressed him: "You and i are always only one plea away from inexorable, Spirit-enabled exploits."

These last two points encourage UPT intercessors to go after miracles.

(4) Finally, there was aNational Day of Prayer for First Nations. A prayer/declaration from Mohawk Indian pastor Willy Jock was given there, and it ushers in a new season of spiritual leadership and forgiving anointing that should encourage and be imitated by UPT intercessors:

The Power to Forgive

We the people, the Host People of this Great Nation and the original lovers of this land, stand united with one heart and one mind, to bring the power of forgiveness to bear. As the Host People of Turtle Island, we forgive every atrocity and broken covenant ever designed to destroy us as a race of people. We break every curse, and renounce every lie, purposed to decimate us as human beings. We forgive the Government, the Church and the educational system for the use of residential schools that attempted to destroy our culture and silence our voice as a people.

We stand in the gap for those who are unable or unwilling to forgive, and call upon the Master of Life, to forgive us for harboring unforgiveness, resentment, hatred, bitterness, and rage. We repent of every curse that was spoken over America by our ancestors and we release the power of forgiveness to bring healing and the peace of Creator God to this land.

We declare and decree that our voice will no longer be silenced and that this nation and the world will hear our voice as we speak life and blessings over the America's and the world.

We stand in faith believing that our citizenship lies in heaven, and we too, all await the return of our Savior; The Lord Jesus Christ. Being all of one mind and heart, having compassion for one another, we declare our love as brothers; not returning evil for evil perpetrated against us, but on the contrary we choose to release a blessing, knowing that the Father of us all has called us as His children to bless and not curse, that we may inherit a blessing. Amen!]]>Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:05:39 GMThttp://www.unitedprayertower.org/blog1/calendar-and-scriptures-for-acr-meeting

On October 28, 2016 the ACR will meet at Watson Homestead, pictured on the left. Carolyn Miller, our UPT coordinator, forwarded a list of key scriptures for us to use as we pray in preparation and in participation in this meeting. Although created for a specific event, they could be used for direction and inspiration for any Christian event.